


Bruises

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:50:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick runs across some interesting marks on Bruce's body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bruises

Dick scrubbed at his hair and yawned. His work-out had been more intense than four hours' sleep warranted, but there was nothing like some good backward aerials and a few slices to the midsection to get the blood flowing. He pushed back the door to the cave's showers and grabbed a towel from the warmed stack Alfred always kept. 

Bruce had beat him there, over in the tiled bay to the left. _Hey, good work-out_ , he was about to call, when he had seen it. 

For a second his mouth had dried. For a second he had thought it was him, that he was the one who had done it. For a second his brain had run frantically through every minute of their work-out together, trying to figure out when the hell he could have done something like that to Bruce.

But then the next second he knew.

Bruce's back was a constellation of lurid, angry, purpled bruises. He had seen Bruce come out of heavy hand-to-hand combat without anything like that number of bruises on him. Not when he was wearing the suit, anyway. Dick stared in shock.

So in the second between one gasp and the next—the airless second between thinking he had done it and realizing he could not possibly have—Dick suddenly knew two things: he knew that Bruce had positively not been wearing the suit when he had gotten those bruises, because those marks could only have been inflicted on unprotected skin, and he knew that each and every one of them was in the shape of fingers. They were finger marks, all of them. Five perfect finger marks ground into his left shoulder, twinning the five perfect finger marks ground into his right shoulder. Another set of twin marks on his ribs, a third on his hips, where the bruising was so severe as to be a purple muddle, where one finger-grip must have overlaid another in rapid succession. A thick muddy bruise right in the middle of his back, that might have been a fist, or a claw mark.

And in the next space of breath he knew a third thing: he knew that only one being alive was strong enough to have inflicted those bruises on Bruce's body. 

Over the noise of the spray, lost in his shower, he knew Bruce didn't hear him. Silently he replaced the towel, and closed the door behind him just as soundlessly.

* * *

Clark's apartment was easy enough to break into. The man had no real security protocols in place. When you were Superman, were you really worried someone was going to get the drop on you? The thought of that serene invulnerability made the weight in Dick's chest writhe and coil.

He waited for about an hour, before Clark made it home from work. He read a few magazines, thumbed through Clark's bookshelf. Went through his drawers in case there were anything interesting, which there wasn't. He had just considered searching the fridge for a beer while he waited when he heard the key in the lock. Dick had been careful to redo the locks.

If Clark was taken aback to find him standing beside his kitchen table, he didn't show it. "Dick," he said, and then, "Anything wrong?"

It was the worried note in Clark's voice that made him lose it. Because Clark was worried something might be wrong with Bruce, actually _worried_ , the piece of shit. It was more than Dick could take, and the escrima stick at his side was in his hand and had cracked across Clark's jaw before he had been aware he was going to do it.

Literally cracked, because of course the stick broke clean in two, the half that broke off skittering across the kitchen floor to roll under the fridge.

"You goddamn son of a bitch," Dick said, and his voice was steady. 

Clark was still, and he was wary. His eyes were tracking Dick. Because of course he was invulnerable, but Dick also knew only a fool took his eyes off Nightwing in a fight, and Clark was no fool. "Dick," he said, frowning. "What the hell was that for? What on earth is going on?"

"Do you get off on it?" Dick's voice was still calm. "Do you get off on seeing how much you can hurt him while you're fucking him? Is it a game to see how far you can go before he can't take it anymore? Is it that you're so into it you don't even hear it when he says _stop you're hurting me_ , or is that what gets you off? Be honest, you can tell me."

Clark was nothing but stillness, tracking Dick's trembling hand and the other escrima stick with his peripheral vision. "You hurt him again," Dick managed through his tight jaw. "You hurt him just one more time, and we won't be having a conversation about it. I will find a way to make you hurt. I promise you that. I have a few ideas about how to do it."

"I'm sure you do," Clark said quietly. 

"We understand each other, then."

Clark's eyes were sad. "No. But I understand what you're saying."

Dick holstered the stick. "Good enough," he said. "Your sock drawer's a mess. I had you pegged for more of a neat freak, but not so much, I see. Also, you need more cornflakes."

"I'll keep it in mind."

Dick pulled the door to behind him. He was good at listening through doors, and he knew that Clark did not move for long minutes after he had left, but just stood there. He also knew it was no effort at all for Clark to hear him, even as he went down the stairs to where his cycle was parked. "I meant it, you bastard," he muttered, knowing Clark could hear that too, was probably listening for it.

* * *

Clark had never noticed how uncomfortable that kitchen table was until he was pushed against it, two nights later. Bruce's hands were all over him, his mouth hungrier than ever. "Couldn't stop thinking about you today," Bruce murmured into his neck, a voice like a broken glass of whisky, sharp edges and warm liquid. 

"Fuck," Clark panted. 

"You better believe it." 

It was hard to keep track of things when Bruce was kissing him, hard to remember which end of the universe was up when their hands were on each other. It was like being thrown into an anti-grav capsule, every time they kissed. "What do you want," Bruce was murmuring in his other ear now. "Tell me what you want."

"Clothes off," Clark whispered. "Now."

Bruce pulled back with a wicked smile. "I've got a better idea," he said. "Clothes on. Ever done it that way?"

If he hadn't known, he would have been fooled. Bruce was just that good. "Yeah, I went to high school too," Clark said. "I still like naked." And he started on Bruce's shirt buttons. 

Bruce's recoil was a fraction too fast to be casual, but he masked it with another kiss to Clark's neck, and two firm hands on his ass. "Let me show you," he was saying. He rubbed against Clark's hardness with his own. They had been making out for about ten minutes now, and they were good and cranked. "Let me show you how it can be good." He was kissing up Clark's jaw now.

"I want your shirt off," Clark said.

"This way's better."

Clark wrenched his head away. "Bruce. Take your fucking shirt off."

Bruce froze. "Getting a little dom there, aren't we?"

"Goddammit, Bruce." In a quick, efficient motion he had ripped the shirt into two strips and peeled it off Bruce's chest. Good thing the man didn't bother with undershirts.

"That's four-fifty you owe me," Bruce said, watching a button bounce off a chair. Clark turned him, and saw his back. He sank to the chair and put his head in his hands. 

"Fuck," he said weakly.

"Oh, I think we can forget about that." 

Clark beat back the rising tide of nausea at the sight of Bruce's back. He had known it was bad, just from Dick's face. Dick must have wanted to stick a knife in his gut. It was what he deserved. "I'm so goddamn sorry," he whispered. "Bruce. I don't—I don't know what to say, I'm just so sorry."

"Shut the hell up. You have nothing to apologize for."

"Nothing to apologize for? I beat you. I— _I_ did that to you. Bruce. Jesus Christ, how can you look at me, how can you—"

"For fuck's sake, I made you do it. Stop wringing your hands like my grandmother. I made you do it, all right? I goaded you into losing control, and I did it on purpose. I should probably be apologizing to you. Are we done?"

"You. . . made me. Bruce, you didn't make me do anything, that isn't even—"

"You think I don't know how to manipulate you to get what I want?"

Clark was only more puzzled. "What you want?"

Bruce was collecting the pieces of his shirt. "Yes, what I want, you idiot. I wanted you to do it, I wanted you to hurt me. I knew you wouldn't if I asked, so I got it another way."

"I don't. . . understand. Why would you want me to do that?"

Bruce's gaze was contemptuous. "Just when I thought you could not be a bigger moron. I wanted it because its gets me off hard, all right? Harder than anything else. I need it. I need the pain. I know it's difficult to imagine why I didn't just have this conversation with you, since this one is going so well." 

Clark's hand was covering his mouth now, and he was thinking. Watching Bruce standing there. "You could have asked," he said. "You could have explained. Anything, and I would have done it." 

Bruce shifted his eyes at that. "It's not normal," he said. "I realize that. I can't explain the mechanism of it. I just. . . need it." He was holding a sleeve. 

Clark nodded, slowly. "When you're alone. When you. . ."

"Jack off."

"Yes. What do you. . ."

"I have a—" Bruce broke off, and shifted his eyes again. _He's embarrassed_ , Clark thought with sudden astonishment. _No. He's humiliated_. "A small switchblade," Bruce said. "I can use it to. . . wherever I need it. Just give me a shirt, and let me go home." 

"No," Clark said. 

"We're done here. This whole thing was a mistake. I'm going to go home and try to forget any of this ever happened, and you are going to do the same."

"Now who's giving orders." 

He rose lightly. He tipped Bruce's face toward his with a finger. "You tell me what you need, and we figure out how to get it," he said. Bruce's eyes were still turned away. " _We_ figure it out," he repeated. He brushed his lips against Bruce's jaw. 

"Because I would do anything—" and he let his lips mark a trail up and around that sharp jaw—"to get you off. Goddamn anything." Bruce's breathing was notably faster. 

Clark slipped a hand into Bruce's pants pocket. "Other one," Bruce said, so softly he might not have heard it, and sure enough, there it was, nestled in the bottom of his pocket: small and cool and slick. It fit right in the palm of his hand. While he was in there he stroked Bruce's cock through the fabric of his pocket. He was still half-hard, and rapidly getting hard again. He rubbed at the head, where he knew Bruce would be getting wet. 

"Dry cleaning for this pair," Bruce said, "is going to run you about fifty. This would put your bill for today at five hundred."

"I'll have to pay in installments." He pulled his hand out, but kept the little blade. With his other hand he unfastened Bruce's buckle. "So as I was saying," he continued. "Clothes off."

* * *

Clark was in him balls-deep, and he was bent over the edge of the bed. Thank God Clark's bed was tall. Most of Clark's weight was pinning him. The blanket was rucked underneath him, and he was rubbing against its roughness, right where it felt good.

"God— _fuck_ —" He tightened his fist in the sheets. The force of Clark's thrusts was pushing him forward, into the mattress. God, he was close, just pushing his cock on the sheets like this. 

"You're gonna make a mess," Clark said. His voice was sex-strangled. "All over my—all in—"

Bruce reached a hand behind him, a wild flail of a gesture, and gripped Clark's ass. His balls were so tight they ached. He was close—so close—he couldn't, couldn't quite—" _Please_ ," he gasped, and the next instant there was pain like lightning, like white heat, like a snake curling inside his body, and like a snake it wound a sinuous path into his hipbone and somehow did not stop. This was no short sharp stab during a desperate jack-off, this was elegant, this was deliberate, this was a velvet-gloved hand closing on his throat and it didn't stop, didn't let go, and he threw his head back and shouted his ecstasy.

Clark was moving faster now, and he heard the knife clatter to the floor, felt the hot spurt of Clark's first wave of come inside him. "Fucking beautiful," Clark whimpered. "Coming—oh God I'm coming—so—unh—" and the feel of Clark's release shook another shiver of wet from his own cock. Their breathing slowed, the walls began to re-settle on their foundations. He was wrung, he was emptied, he was sated. He could feel the blood drip down his thigh and knew the cut had been long and intricate. Even at the thought, his cock twitched again. 

Clark was heavy on him, letting his full weight press him down now. "Need me to move," Clark whispered, and Bruce shook his head. Tentatively, he flexed. 

"You're still hard."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Bruce pillowed his head on his arms and let himself drift. "Do what you want," he said.

"Are you—I don't have to—"

"Shut up and fuck me," he growled, and Clark took him at his word, hitched his ass up and started thrusting again, smaller, shallower thrusts that nonetheless clipped his prostate on every upstroke. He bit his lip and relaxed a bit more. He knew what that cut must have felt like, for Clark, how hard it must have been to steel himself to it. If Clark could want his pleasure, he needed to get used to the idea that Bruce could want his, too. 

It was a night of firsts, because he fell asleep in Clark's bed for the first time, too. It wasn't what he had intended, but was any of it? He hadn't thought this far ahead when they had started. All he had seen was how much he wanted to come with his body pressed against that perfect body, next to that mouth he ached for. It was just sex. 

When Clark had finally found release—after several more times, during one of which Bruce had actually come again—and they had been lying apsrawl and boneless, two large men on a too-small mattress, he had thought to check on his cut. Most of the blood had dried, so he swigged from the water bottle beside the bed, then used the water to dampen an edge of the sheet and wiped at his hip. 

"Hey," Clark protested, weakly.

"Like you weren't going to wash these sheets anyway." He dabbed at his hip, wiping away the crust of blood. He could just see the cut, if he twisted his head enough. He blinked at it. The unbelievable fucker.

"You unbelievable fucker," he said. 

"What?" Clark had the temerity to look like he didn't know what he was talking about.

"You motherfucking smart-ass little piece of—you carved an 'S' into my hip?!"

Clark was chuckling now, and Bruce rolled over, landed on top of him, and pinned him with his thighs. "I have to shower at the Watchtower," he said. "You son of a bitch, I'm gonna carve a bat on your balls."

"I wish you could," he said, his eyes meeting Bruce's, and Bruce was tempted to flinch away from what he saw there. Not the deal, this was not the deal, everything in him was reaching for the backbutton he could no longer find. Clark was still under him, but beginning a mild thrusting motion. 

"Insatiable," Bruce remarked, with an arch of brow.

"You could make a knife." Clark's eyes were still on Bruce. "You could edge it with kryptonite. Leslie has scalpels, you could lift one of those."

"Never," Bruce said.

Clark put his hands behind his head. "Why? Why is it okay for you, but not for me?"

"It's not the knife I'm objecting to, and you know it. You're out of your mind if you think I'm ever using kryptonite on you recreationally, in play like that." Clark was running his hands up Bruce's sides, still experimenting with that thrust a bit, he noticed. 

"Play," Clark repeated idly, but Clark rarely said things idly. "Is that what we're doing." 

"I don't know anymore," Bruce said. It was as honest as he knew how to be, and he knew Clark would leave it. 

"So tell me," Clark said. He ran a thumb over the 'S' on Bruce's hip, studying it. It was even bordered by the shield, because Clark was never going to do anything by halves. "Tell me, did you and Selina ever. . ."

"No," Bruce said. "We haven't ever. Done that, I mean."

He let the tense of that verb rest there, between them. He knew Clark's question was about more than the knifeplay. He let the verb tense, and its suggestion of continued activity, with its unspoken _yet_ , hover in the air around them. Saw it register on Clark's face. Saw him as quickly avert his eyes, and then regretted what he had said. 

"Won't ever, because I'm not involved with Selina any more," he corrected. 

"Okay," Clark said, the same even tone as before. He had never meant to say that. Surely he hadn't meant to say that. Surely he hadn't meant to give up fucking Selina. Clark wouldn't ask him to make a choice. Clark hadn't asked him. But Clark's eyes were pulling him in, and there was warmth in them, and tenderness, and it was all aimed at him, at no one but him, and he knew that any promise he had had to make to get Clark to look at him like that was worth it. 

Holy shit, he was screwed.

* * *

He woke a little before dawn and made his way to Clark's kitchen to see if he had orange juice. He padded across the apartment naked. He stood at the counter and chugged from the bottle. He stared contemplatively at the tile backsplash as he drank. Clark's arms around him did not surprise him. He continued drinking. 

"You'll come back to bed?" Clark's voice was husky, his body sleep-warm.

"For a little bit." Surely he hadn't meant to say that. He had meant to get going.

"Mkay." Clark yawned against him, then pulled out a kitchen drawer. He shuffled through papers, receipts, stray matches, old keys, and nine thousand disused pens. Bruce arched a brow at the serious lack of organization. Finally Clark located what he was looking for, then scrabbled through several more pens before finding one that worked. He amused himself imagining Alfred's face, if he could see that drawer. 

"Here you go," Clark said, handing him a scribbled check. Four hundred and fifty dollars, _Clark J. Kent_ signed in a loopy scrawl beneath it. 

Bruce rolled his eyes. "Not necessary, but thanks."

"There's just one thing." Clark was recapping the pen, chewing on a corner of his lip. "If you could—if it's not a problem, I mean, if you could hold off cashing it til Tuesday, that would be great." 

Bruce stared at the check on the counter, schooling his breaths until he knew they were even and controlled. He did not speak until he felt the tide of rage recede, until he felt himself master it. Clark didn't have that in the bank. He felt all the obscenity of that. He felt all the shame of his own bank account, by comparison. _Why wouldn't you come to me, why wouldn't you tell me, don't you know I would give you anything, anything you wanted, you breathe in the direction of something and I will give it to you, let me give you everything, everything you deserve, let me_ —

He shut his eyes. Not so mastered after all. "So you don't have it," was all he said. 

"I will, I told you, on Tuesday. It's no big deal."

"You don't have it because you sent more than you should have to the farm this month."

Clark said nothing, but Bruce hadn't been asking a question anyway. Family farms were not what you would call a going financial concern, these days. Clark made enough money to support himself, enough for a single man of relatively spartan tastes, who didn't mind buying generic orange juice. Clark couldn't cover this check, because Clark's money went elsewhere. "Goddammit," Bruce swore quietly. "We've talked about this."

"Enough," Clark said. 

"No, it isn't. Last year, after the tornado, you let me help. Why not now?"

"You know why."

Bruce frowned. "I don't know. Why on earth wouldn't you—"

"Because we're sleeping together, all right? That's why it's different now. Because it is. Because I'm not a whore, that's why." Clark's voice was sharp, and Bruce felt it slice into him. He set the bottle of orange juice on the counter and felt the need to shut his eyes again. He couldn't speak. For him, because of him. He wiped at his face. Clark's arms were crossed, just staring at him. 

"There is no universe," Bruce said, and had to stop. He cleared his throat. "There is no universe, there is no possible world, in which you are that word whose sound I will not tolerate or even mention in the same breath as the _thought_ of you."

Clark looked abashed. "I didn't mean to be insulting. And I didn't mean to be ungrateful for how you helped them last year, or what you—"

"Please stop talking," Bruce said. If he had to listen to Clark talk about this any more, if he had to listen to some filthy obscenity like gratitude coming out Clark's mouth, he was going to lose whatever tenuous control he had, and lose it spectacularly. So he did the best thing he knew to shut Clark up, which was to kiss him. He put his hands on Clark's neck, held his jaw in place. He kissed him soundly and well, kissed him with their naked groins brushing together, kissed him by pouring everything he wanted to say, everything he meant to say, everything he had never meant to say, into Clark's mouth with tongue and teeth and lips. 

Clark must have heard it, because he pulled back and studied Bruce with a small frown. "Definitely back to bed," he said.

Bruce smiled, and pushed Clark backwards out of the kitchen, maneuvering him back to the tiny bedroom. He didn't stop kissing him. Clark had started a small moaning sound on his exhale, and Bruce smiled some more.

Clark was a genius, but he wasn't a financial genius, and there were myriad ways to funnel money to the Kents that Clark didn't have to know anything about. Mentally he rearranged his morning appointments to include a consult with his accountant. Some fancy bookkeeping might be involved, but he was confident he could elude even Clark's observation. He pushed him flat on the bed, pleased at his ability to distract. He lowered himself onto Clark, and slid down until his mouth was an inch from that beautiful cock. He hovered there. Clark groaned, and pushed up. Bruce had stopped.

"Bruce?"

"Be right back." He crawled off Clark, got up, and headed back to the kitchen.

"Um, Bruce?"

"Yeah, right there." He was standing in the kitchen. Something. It was something. Something had caught his eye, when he had pulled the orange juice out of the fridge. He just couldn't place what it was. 

"Bruce Wayne, you jerk, get back in here!"

"Oh, just a goddamn minute," he called, and then he placed it. It had been a bit of reflection that shouldn't have been there, under the corner of the fridge. He toed it out, and looked at it. A long black stick, sheared clean in half. An escrima stick. 

"Well isn't that interesting," he said softly, and stuffed the stick in Clark's nightmare of a kitchen drawer, where he could retrieve it later. 

He strode back to the bedroom and crawled atop Clark. "Sorry, baby," he said, knowing he would be forgiven for the ridiculous endearment.

* * *

Dick generally took his lunch at his desk, now that he had made detective. It was just that it was a completely amazing amount of paperwork, and back when he had thought about it, back when he had actually longed to make detective (Had there been a time like that? It didn't seem probable anymore) he had never realized just how much drudgery was involved in the job. 

He sighed and scraped another soggy fry in the ketchup that was soaking into the greasy paper. At least Joyce occasionally brought him lunch. "That's really sweet," he had said today. "Thanks. I forgot to pack mine."

"Oh, you mean you forgot to throw the foil pack of rainbow sprinkle pop tarts in your gym bag? Yeah, imagine that," she had sighed, and moved away, shaking her head. He liked Joyce. If Malik didn't start treating her better, he was going to have to bust Malik's head open. 

A paper bag landed on his desk with a thunk. 

Even he took a second to recognize the big scruffy guy standing over him. Ratty jeans, dirty hoodie, billed cap shadowing his face. "Jesus, you scared me to death," he said. "You didn't have to come in disguise."

The guy shrugged. "You don't need Bruce Wayne hanging around here, making your life harder."

Dick took a suck off his coke and said nothing to that. He'd never told Bruce about any of that, but he probably hadn't needed to. He had been right in applying to the Bludhaven Police Academy, because cops here didn't have many ties to Gotham, whose PD they mostly disdained, and they sure as hell didn't read the society papers. The name Richard Grayson didn't trigger any connections for them, and he had mostly gone unnoticed. Until of course the day one of them had made the connection, had for some unknown reason picked up the Gotham paper's metro section and there he had been in all his tuxedo'ed glory, _adopted son of philanthropist Bruce Wayne_ , whose arm was around him. . .

That had been the day of his first beating. And at some point in the scuffle he had thought, _I could take them, I could take all of them without any problem_ , but he had realized that if he did, he would have sealed his fate forever. So he made feints at fighting back, but had let them pound him, and his calculation had been right, that had been the end of it. Well. Most of those idiots had dropped out anyway, and none of them were sitting behind a detective's desk right now. 

"It's all right," he said. "Sit down and have lunch with me. Want some coffee?"

"Open the bag."

Dick shook it out, and Bruce sat in the chair beside his desk. The broken escrima stick rolled on top of his paperwork. "Ah," he said. "I was wondering where that went."

"Were you now. Any idea how it ended up in Clark's kitchen?"

Dick winced. "We were sparring?"

"I've been trying to calculate the force necessary to cut one of your sticks in half that way, with that clean a break. Exactly what part of Clark's body did you break it across?"

The wince became a grimace. "His face."

Bruce's silence told him Bruce was mastering his anger. There was never any tell on Bruce's face, when he was doing that. As a kid he had let himself wonder, once or twice, what Bruce's temper had been like before he had learned to control it so ruthlessly. He tried not to think about that. 

"Why," Bruce said at last. It was more of a command than a question. Long experience told him that Bruce never asked a question to which he did not already know the answer. 

"I was angry," he temporized.

"Because."

He tossed a fry on the paper, then balled up the whole and tossed it at the trash. "Because I saw your back, that's why. All right? I saw what he did. I saw how he hurt you. What the hell would you have done, if you had seen something like that on me? Burned something down, probably."

"I see," Bruce said, and he sat back in the chair, folded his arms. The cap completely shadowed his face. He appeared to be thinking. 

"The most powerful person on the planet," Dick said. "You can't sleep with that and expect not to—I mean Jesus, he could lose control without even meaning to, he just—"

"You grew up around him," Bruce mused. "And you know him not at all."

He chewed his lip. "I think the world of Clark, all right? You know that. I always have. But I don't forget what he's capable of."

"And you think I do."

"I think. . ." _I think you've been in love with him so long you can't see some very basic truths_ , was what he wanted to say. "I think you. . . should be careful."

"Do you."

"Look, I know the talk I'm about to get, by the way. Your private life is your business, stay out of it, don't interfere, blah blah. I could write it. I could also write an even longer list of all the times you have completely ignored that, when it comes to me."

"Because you are my _son_ ," Bruce said, and the word stopped him short. It wasn't one they used. It wasn't one he had ever heard Bruce toss out casually like this. If this was what you would call a casual exchange. "Because that was my right, as the person who had responsibility for your life, when you were growing up. But I don't interfere in your adult life."

Dick shot him a look. "Much," Bruce conceded. He sighed. "Look," he said, and it was kind of remarkable to see, but Bruce appeared to be at something of a loss here. "What Clark and I do is. . . our business. But you should know, Clark isn't hurting me. Hasn't hurt me. He hasn't ever done anything I haven't asked him to do. Is that clear?"

Dick digested that along with the bad fries. He wasn't surprised to hear Bruce was into masochism, which actually made perfect sense, when you thought about it. He was just surprised to hear him owning up to it—to him, of all people. "Okay," he said. 

"Unless your anger was about something else entirely," Bruce said.

"Like what?"

"The fact that I'm. . ." The pause lengthened painfully, as Dick saw him trying to imagine alternatives to _dating_. "That Clark and I are involved," he said. "That I'm bi."

"Bruce. I've known your sexuality for a lot of years, are you kidding me? You think I give a shit about that? I would hope you know me better than that."

Bruce had his head aimed downward so the cap completely covered him. His hands were thrust in the shabby pockets. "Maybe," he said. "But I wasn't open with you, when you were younger. I never told you the reason for that."

"Come on, you weren't obligated to share your entire private life with a nine year old. I get that. You're not so much with the sharing."

"I had reason to believe they might take you away," he said abruptly. "I wasn't out of the closet because losing you was on the table. You were my ward, I didn't have the protection of adoption until later. One bigoted clerk in one office, is all it would have taken for me to be a child molester. I couldn't lose you."

Dick stared at his desk. Goddammit, he was going to cry. He was going to cry right here. He wanted to reach for Bruce, hug him, touch him. There were people milling about over near the water cooler, Malik's bray of a laugh. 

"You don't owe me any explanations," he said, through a tight throat. "And I would never have let them take me away from you, never. I would have fought them."

Bruce adjusted the cap, and Dick could see his rueful smile. "I don't doubt it," he said. 

"Yeah. Well. About the other. I'm sorry about—confronting Clark like that. It won't happen again."

"I know," Bruce said easily. 

"Are you. . ." _Happy_ , he wanted to say. _In love_. There were a lot of things they didn't say to each other. Most of the time that was okay. "Headed home?" was what he settled for.

"Probably. I've got a little snooping around to do in Gotham first. The disguise wasn't entirely for your benefit."

"Of course."

Bruce rose, and then the next instant had settled into the slouch required by the hoodie. "What are you doing for dinner?"

"Oh, I dunno. I was thinking I might vary my usual diet of leftover pizza with some fresh pizza."

Bruce cocked a brow, and he knew Bruce was scanning him for any sign that his unhealthy diet was beginning to tell on his body. He also knew Bruce wouldn't find any. "Tell you what," Bruce said. "Come to the Manor for dinner tonight, and you can eat some actual food."

"Actual food, huh. I thought Alfred was in Manchester until next week."

"He is. Clark is cooking. I thought you might want to stop by."

Dick stretched and grinned. "Hey, I see what you did there. Very smooth." 

"I do have that reputation." There was one last onion ring in the sodden box Joyce had brought back, and he plucked it and ate it. "Disgusting," he pronounced. 

"You know, solid food is actually supposed to be good for you. I read it somewhere. But I'm probably too accepting of bogus things like nutritional science, right?"

With a snort and a final glance at the onion rings, Bruce began to make his way toward the door. People were coming back from lunch now, moving quickly around him, jostling into him a bit because he was a nobody, probably just some indigent informant. Bruce kept his eyes down. "Hey, what time," Dick called.

"Eight," Bruce said back, without turning around. He was out the swinging doors. Malik propped himself on the corner of his desk and stole an onion ring too. 

"Lunch with the homeless?"

"You know me too well."

"Yeah, I know I do. He trying to tell you he just know he saw the head of the Scarpetti family down by the docks last night taking a shipment? And for a bill, he'll tell you where they stashed the goods? Man, you are a chump. Jesus," he spat, making a face. "These onion rings suck ass."

"You're a food-thief who should treat his woman better, and you deserve all the ass-sucking onion rings you get."

"I know it," said Malik, with a sigh. 

Dick returned to his paperwork, but there was a little smile around his mouth now, and the day looked possible to get through. Eight wasn't that far away.


End file.
